


Stop crying so loud, Strider

by TalkingAnimals



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Ideation, gets slightly heavy near the end, it's not explicitly Davekat I guess but? It Is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6464968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalkingAnimals/pseuds/TalkingAnimals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuck, why are you you the one hearing this? His block isn't even anywhere near yours, you were just going to visit Kanaya and this corridor is one of the most straightforward paths to her block on this entire fucking meteor. You didn't even know Dave had his fucking room here until this unwarranted noise hit your sound bowls.</p><p>&</p><p>This might not be that good because I took a huge break in the middle of writing it and, kind of lost my original feel for it I guess but there's enough stuff in it I still like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop crying so loud, Strider

He's crying.

You shouldn't know it's him crying, because you have no reference point for what him crying sounds like, but there's no way that combination of sounds is being produced by anyone but him. You know it couldn't because you'd extensively examined every other possible option for the source of the sound, even pausing to anguish over the idea of Gamzee loudly wailing somewhere and it being delivered to you as soft gasps and hiccups through the vents, before you finally settled on the pretty undeniable truth: Dave Strider is definitely fucking crying.

Fuck, why are you you the one hearing this? His block isn't even anywhere near yours, you were just going to visit Kanaya and this corridor is one of the most straightforward paths to her block on this entire fucking meteor. You didn't even  _know_ Dave had his fucking room here until this unwarranted noise hit your sound bowls. Wait, sorry, you're in the presence of an emotionally vulnerable human, you should try and be culturally sensitive in your internal monologue. What was the human term for them again? "Ears", you think? What a great fucking word, seriously, just chop the "H" off of "hears" for the fucking sound recieving organ, as if THAT'S not the most confusing way possible to construct a language. God forbid someone tries to talk to you with any hint of an Alternian accent, good luck splitting those two words apart in a sentence. What, the people developing the language on earth didn't have time to accomodate the speech patterns of the aliens that literally willed it into being? You're fuming in the hall and seriously have no idea that earth has more than one language, but you're distracted from your internal tirade when you hear another choke from the room beside you.

FUCK, you'd gotten so mad you'd forgotten about that. This is a problem, you think, because now you've stood outside his block for so long fuming you've accidentally committed yourself to caring about this. You're not having an easy time thinking of a mode of action, either, because from the moment you zoned yourself back in you haven't been able to stop focusing on the sound of it. It's a huge contrast to the harsh method of speaking he usually has, the awkward squeaks and yelps he gets in his voice when he's excited or when he's taken by surprise, it's soft and you know it's not just because it's muffled by the door, it's being contained by him, too. God, you shouldn't be sitting here _studying_ the particular brand of crying he has, you should be--

Hold on.

What are those doing there?

Why the FUCK are your teeth dug into your bottom lip like that? Why is your face...

Why is your face BOILING hot?

This is not okay. This is so beyond being okay, this fucker can't just sit there, IN THE COMFORT OF HIS OWN ROOM, and make YOU feel like THIS just because you're apparently a little bit sensitive to the emotional vulnerability of humans or something. That thought didn't actually ease your tension about how invested in the sound of this dude's crying and, by extension, this dude's mood you apparently are, but you're gonna give him a piece of your mind for interfering with your otherwise _completely_ stable mood.

"STRIDER!" You knock on the door so loud you scare yourself. You didn't realize just how soft that crying was and how closely you were listening.

There's a pause you expected, accounting for the obvious confusion of why you would even be down here, but when he opens up the door a second later he seems completely unphazed. Fucker. He was SO phazed a second ago, you fucking heard him.

"'Sup?" He offers, and although it's flatly delivered you can tell there's a little more moisture in his throat than usual just from the sound of it.

You realize you didn't actually formulate a plan for how you were going to address this, so you barrel clumsily forward into, "Stop crying so loud."

Nailed it.

"Uh-" He siffens visibly, even taking half a step back in the shock you apparently delivered. It doesn't take more than a second, though, for his face to fall into a frown and for him to regain his footing.

"Fuck you, I'll cry as loud as I want to, whenever I want to, Karkat. Stop spying on people crying, you big fucking weirdo."

Okay, you feel like that couldn't be classified as a "zinger" or whatever the term John had for Dave's one-liners used to be. So that means, you totally caught him off guard and he is TOTALLY phazed. Ha ha. You count it as a silent victory as if someone not being on their a-game after a solid crying session is a sign of defeat. For you, especially if it concerns Dave Strider, it is.

"I wasn't _spying_ on you," You assert, talking fast enough that you don't remind yourself how far your block is from here, "I was in this hall and I fucking heard you, and I was trying to mind my own business, but here I am instead because I, like the good meteor pal that I am, heard you crying too loud and had to tell you to tone it fucking down, Strider."

He bristles, "Hey, maybe it was actually just the sound of me furiously masturbating to the idea of you _leaving me alone forever_ , did you ever think of that."

He starts to close the door as you say, "NO, I didn't, because I don't know what that is and also because, fuck you that's why."

You catch him smile as he's trying to close the door on you and you _know_ he said something vaguely related to pailing now because that's _always_  the laugh he fucking gives you when you assert total ignorance in the face of human innuendos. 

At least you have an in now.

"SEE? We're even now, you totally cry too loudly and I make up for it by fucking up the alternian to earth translation. Let me in."

He pauses for a second, the door half closed and his face only partly visible behind it.

"Alright, Karkat, you weird fucking alien disaster, come in, dude." He doesn't slide the door open again, just kind of hits it sideways in a gesture of begrudging acceptance of your presence. You nudge it wider with your hip as you walk in in an act of defiance against his lack of hospitality. He wasn't even looking when you did it, though, and you have to resist the urge to walk back just to do it again, but louder. You just close the door like a normal guest instead.

"THIS is your hive?" You can't help but blurt when you see the absolute shitstorm that is Dave Strider's room.

Like, a storm of shit went through here, that must be where the expression came from on earth, an actual, literal natural event of unending trash that humans are absolutely powerless to stop the force of. There's no other explanation for the amount of trash able to be accumulated by one person. Maybe some of it is _literal_ shit? Do humans excrete those weird pointed blocks of -- no, that's a computer part, you _know_ that, which is great because otherwise you would have definitely fucking asked, and then you would not even sort of have the upper hand anymore.

"This is my room, yeah, I'm not just hanging out in unmanned closets getting my cry on, dude. I've got some standards." He's kicking things out of the way on his floor into what seems like a path? It makes you feel like this mess actually somehow _isn't_ his own fault as you start to follow him down the established absence of clutter. He has a couch alchemized in the corner, and he slumps down on it in a way that indicates to you you'll be finding another seat. You try not to look around too obviously, grabbing a chair and spinning it around so you're sitting backwards on it as you face him. You both consider each other for a moment before the obvious next question rolls out of your face,

"Why is your hive such a grubfucking mess?"

That wasn't the obvious next question, that wasn't even on the list of things you wanted to go over, that wasn't even on the honourable mentions list of things you actually wanted to discuss, that was--

"Can you lay off, dude?" He's spread himself out even more on the couch, taking up the full length of it with his foot pressed flat against one side and his shoulder pressed up against he other. His cape is hanging over one shoulder of his crossed arms and you can see the pressure of his hands pushing into his arms are whitening the base of his fingernails. Stop looking at that, fucking focus, he's been talking to you for the whole time you've been taking this shit in, fucking  
focus, Karkat,

"--the best time to come bug me about this shit, man, so can you just get out or chill the fuck out on me for a second?"

Thank gog he re-stated the thesis of his rant at the end or you would have no idea what facial reactions you should be exhibiting in response to it. He's holding your eyes as well as he can through a wall of tinted glass, and you're only slightly amping up the frustrated look on your face so he knows you not only feel like a dick for saying that out of turn (true), but also so he knows you just took in everything he had to say and need to think about it thoroughly (not true, your face is full of shit right now).

You see him twitch, and you both half-move to stand up before one of you (it's you, you're the one who does this), blurts out another stupid question,

"What were you crying about?" You literally yell it, as if you weren't digging yourself into a hole of botched social cues and cultural norms already, and he does another freeze-recover just like he had at the door.

"Okay, cool, I guess we're just gonna ignore "lay off" and "get out" as options and bowl directly into "continue being an obtuse fucking wad"." He's tense, in what is clearly an uncomfortable position with half of his torso raised off the couch and his fingertips tenuously holding his weight up. His lack of momentum tells you he might not have had a plan for "Karkat isn't swayed by appeals to goodwill" and, in his defense, you didn't either.

You notice yourself staring him down, not with any real intent to intimidate but because you're sure you can find a way to work yourself out of this if you just focus on him, like his essence will tell you what you're supposed to be saying or something. You really hope his essence is, uh, the reason you just used the word "essence" seriously in a sentence to yourself like that, because you sure as fuck aren't taking the credit for that one if you don't have to.

"Listen," You're still not using a normal indoor speaking voice, but that doesn't seem to bother Dave as he can probably sense, you know, the fucking _essence_ surrounding you indicating you're actually going to stop being a buldgewad and apologize,

"I know ah-" It's actually supposed to be "I", indicating, you know, that you're about to discuss your various shortcomings that have accumulated over the past two and a half minutes, but it pops back into your throat as he cuts you off.

"Do you miss your shitty planet sometimes?"

The "ah" dips further down your throat as you swallow, and it burps back up as a,

"yeah,"

before you can really stop it.

You hold your gaze with his (you think?), and heat creeps back up into your face as you both stay silent. You find yourself kind-of awkwardly folding back onto the chair you were moving to leave.

"...Yeah, I do, a lot." You admit, and it fucking confuses you to hear it because, you were really fucking sure that was not where you were going with that prompt. If someone had come up to you and said, hey, Karkat, what would you do if some fucko came up and asked if you missed Alternia, you're sure as shit your hypothetical answer to the hypothetical would be "no fucking way", so you need to know where the fuck _that_  came from and why your past and future selves are both conspiring against you with more immediacy than ever. Shit, shit, pay a--

"It sucks, right?" He hasn't broken eye contact yet or, at least, hasn't moved his head to indicate it. You can see him fidgeting, though, and he opted to sit up instead of laying back down when he'd re-adjusted himself on his seat. His hand drums his knee while the other one curls his cape around his fingers, and he bounces one of his legs with enough energy you kind-of get the feeling he's not even aware he's doing it.

"It sucks in, not even the normal way it should suck, because it was _terrible_ , right? It was fucking terrible." (Your head dips in a small nod,) "Like you spend your whole life getting robbed and ripped off of opportunities to actually become yourself and the only reason you were really sticking around was the slim hope that someday all your fucking trying would amount to what you know wouldn't be what you wanted for yourself but at least could be something that you could look back on and say hey, that's it, the bare minimum of what I could have had, I finally at least got that, and you fucking plan and work on all this shit for who you are and who you wanna be even though the conditions for it are so fucking hard and such fucking bullshit, and you wish it would all get blasted off the planet and take you with it, and when it does it doesn't take you and all you're left to think about is how much you'll never even scrape the bottom of the barrel of what you thought you could have had and been."

His head had dropped and his hands had come up to meet it, elbows resting on furiously shaking knees while he verbally lost way more lunches than either of you probably expected when you invited yourself in. Your face was hot already, but its burns in your cheeks so strongly it almost feels like it's hollowing them out. You weren't prepared for this kind of intense emotional hiccup in the middle of this hallway, and you  _definitely_ weren't ready for Strider barf up half the shit you had been struggling with on this fucking meteor without even realizing it. Which, Fuck Him, by the way, as if it's not probably against some sort of fucking interplanetary bro code to just solve other dude's issues for them and start rubbing it in their fucking face,

"Do you ever miss the chance to at least try and get shit back?" And he lets out a chuckle so dry you feel your lips chap.

"--Oh, dude, what the fuck, don't _you_ start crying, what the fuck,"

 _"Don't_ you _start crying",_ as if this is YOUR fault. HE'S the one that interrupted your perfectly peaceful walk down the hall, and he can't get mad at you for like, crying on his already disgusting room or whatever,

"Dude calm down what the fuck chill out I didn't mean it shit shit the earth is uh, probably fine even though that doesn't make any fucking sense and I'm clearly just clumsily trying to just retrace my verbal steps here and un-escalate this fucked up conversation and, uh,"

...He paps you?

It's an awkwardly delivered one, kind of a smack-smack on the side of your face without any of the necessary tempo considerations or hand angling that would usually be present, in fact you kind of get the feeling he doesn't know what he's doing  _at all_ which makes the instinctual nature of it  _even worse_ but honestly before you can consider the full gauntlet of possible motivations and ramifications here, you've already screamed out, "STRIDER, WHAT THE FUCK, DON'T DO THAT."

You don't actually mean to yell but when do you ever, and his hand pulls back while you become extremely conscious of how weird and fucked up and gross you feel and probably look right now, which you do NOT need you do NOT need this un-agreed-upon papping making you automatically calm down and start thinking about unproductive shit like THAT when you were PERFECTLY FINE just crying alone like an asshole without any hel-- oh.

Oh, shit.

"I HAVE TO GO," you inform him, slapping down on an open palm he left unguarded on his left knee and running to the door before turning around to shout,

"THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME OVER, AT YOUR BLOCK. I PROMISE TO COME BACK BASICALLY NEVER AND NEVER DO THIS AGAIN."

"Cool--?" you're pretty sure is what he possibly said as the door flies closed and you run the entire rest of the way to Kanaya's block.

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]

TG: hey dude uh

TG: i dunno if that's some weird alien customs thing or just run-of-the-mill karkat weirdness or whatever 

TG: cuz you know

TG:leave when you want do what you gotta do it's your life rock on

TG: but just  uh

TG: could we maybe not

TG: uh

TG: dude just don't blab about all this weird shit I said to everyone ok

CG: YEAH, NO PROBLEM

CG: I'M ALSO *NOT* PARTICULARLY STOKED TO TELL PEOPLE ABOUT HOW I BARGED INTO DAVE STRIDER'S ROOM JUST TO YELL ABOUT CRYING AND THEN BLUBBER FOR 10 MINUTES AND LEAVE SO

CG: YOU BASICALLY DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT *THAT* GETTING OUT

CG: ***EVER***

CG: ok dude cool dude thanks

turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]

You tell Kanaya absolutely everything.


End file.
